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570 J A M E S { 1923-1926 ]fragment of tooth. This would have been removed by a dentist on March24 had not fresh trouble broken out in the right eye. Borsch put hispatient on a strict diet and advised him to walk eight or ten kilometers aday. 'If I can do this with one eye sightless and the other inflamed intoday's thick damp fog through the traffic of Paris on an unfed stomachI shall apply for the legion of honor.' 76Early in April the fragment of tooth was removed, and in the intervalbetween dentist and ophthalmologist Joyce had just enough sight to beable, with the aid of three magnifying glasses and his son, to revise ChapterV (104-25) for the Criterion, where it was published in July. Hesubmitted to the seventh operation on his left eye in the middle of Apriland remained in the clinic for ten days. There were not many visitors.When Wyndham Lewis came one day, Nora complained that thoughJoyce was supposed to be surrounded by admirers, she and he had satthere together, the two of them like a couple of old hens, for hours onend without a visitor. Another day Mrs. Nutting came, and he asked herto read the footnotes and appendix of a book he had on the city of Dublin,while he listened attentively and seized quickly and eagerly on thepoints he wanted. He was much preoccupied with all aspects of the Danishinvasions, such as the record that they had gone into the land 'as faras the salmon goes.' He and Mrs. Nutting talked then about the earwig,which he associated with his hero Earwicker; she recalled that a Yorkshirename for earwig is 'twitchbell.' 'Will you give me that?' said Joyce, muchpleased.* He remarked that an old legend recounted that Cain got theidea of burial from watching an earwig beside his dead brother Abel.tThey discussed also the white ant, which Joyce had read about for hisfable of 'The Ondt and the Gracehoper'; it was wonderful, he said, thatthis ant could tell before the egg hatched what it would develop into,while the slow human brain had to wait for perhaps twenty years beforeknowing. 77Another visitor was Helen Kastor Fleischman, in whom George Joycewas now taking an interest. A wealthy, handsome, restless woman, shewas soon to separate from her husband, Leon Fleischman, Paris agentfor Boni and Liveright, whom she had married in 1916 at the age oftwenty-one. She came bearing a gift of blackberry jam, Joyce's favorite,and in thanking her he said learnedly, 'They never eat them in France.Do you know why? Because Christ's crown was made of blackberrythorns.' 78He also received a visit from Simone Tery, the French journalistwho admired equally Russian communism and Irish mysticism.'Finnegans Wake (222, 72, 463).t Joyce investigated the earwig carefully, even to the point of writing the entomologicallaboratory of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle for papers on forficula. He likedthe French word for earwig, perce-oreille, and quickly associated it with Percy O'Reilly, afamous player from West Meath in the All Ireland Polo Club in 1905. Then he wrote'The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly' (Finnegans Wake, 44-6).